I have always enjoyed Green's rich characters and well-developed and thought out books. It all started with his first book Looking for Alaska, which won the Michael Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. This is his newest and third book. Like the earlier volumes, the novel's narrator is not the character you would think. Rather than it being the strongest and most interesting characters it is an everyman character from the side that looks on with interest while he is being drawn into the complex happenings caused by the other.

Quentin Jacobsen has been friends with his neighbor Margo for ages. They are just about to graduate from college. Most people wouldn't think they could be friends since she is in the "in-crowd" while Q's best friends are all band geeks. She is well-known for practical jokes and intense plans that make her almost epic in stature among the local teens.

Now after a night of high adventure in which she has convinced Q to help out with some complex plans to enact revenge on her boyfriend after he cheated on her with one of her best friend (The friend doesn't get away without some punishment, either), Margo disappears.

Most people believe that she has run off since it would not be the first time that she has done that. Q, on the other hand, is a little worried that she might have taken it a step further and ended her life. He, with the help of his friends, find themselves following a complex set of clues embedded in her bedroom decor, a Walt Whitman poem, Omnipedia (a Wikipedia type Internet resource), and a run-down former shopping center.

The characters are all drawn with realistic detail and this book is filled with rich writing that is perfect for stronger readers looking for some more. My only complaint is that the clues end up leading Q and his friends on a road trip that takes on outrageous proportions as they race to find Margo before it is too late. Before that, this book is excellent, but the realism crumbles during the ride.